Symptom: The Standards Coordinator function is not sufficiently effective.
An organization's various products should be constructed out of common parts, and should comply with a set of design standards that allow them to work interchangeably. A well-architected product line can reduce development and support costs, speed new products to market, and allow clients to use multiple products together for additional benefits from their synergies.
Standards constrain the design of products (without constraining their functionality). These standards are best organized in a framework (an outline) that includes many empty cells (standards decisions not yet made) as well as easy access to past decisions. The framework helps people find applicable standards, and focuses discussions about new standards on specific (empty) cells.
Standards decisions are best made by a consensus of those stakeholders who are affected by the standard. Dictating a standard ignores much of the knowledge in the organization, and fails to build buy-in which makes compliance unlikely.
The community of stakeholders includes more than the expert who knows the most about the standard. It includes other specialists who must incorporate the standard into their work or operate the resulting products. It also includes technology operators who must live with the resulting designs. In some cases, the stakeholder community includes representatives of clients when they are affected by the decision. Of course, the community of relevant stakeholders will vary for each cell in the framework.
Product design standards planning is not a one-time project. It is a never-ending process of obsoleting old standards and agreeing on new ones.
Product design standards do not drive design. You don't build a product (or migrate existing products) just because a standard exists. To do so would be technology-driven. "Migration strategies" are akin to technology-driven, top-down planning, the opposite of an evolutionary standards-based architecture.
To remain business-driven, every implementation project begins with a customer who needs the product. Product design standards apply from a point in time forward, to all future business-driven design projects.
